Do follower numbers matter? Not as much as you think - though you do need enough potential customers hanging out on your Instagram account to buy from you when you ask them to.

Join us for a two-hour workshop, where we'll work through techniques to find prospective clients on Instagram and turn them into leads (giving you their contact details) so you can turn them into clients. We'll look at two different methods - content and conversation - and how to use them both.

The session will suit you if you are:

looking for more clients/customers for your small business

have an existing Instagram account for your business

are familiar with hashtags and how they work

You will need:

to bring a laptop/some way of accessing your Instagram account with you

have an Instagram account ready to use

a goal: who you would like to attract to your business (be quite specific) and what step you'd like them to take next (e.g. give you their contact details by filling in a form OR buy X product)

You can expect:

an overview of the techniques and how they fit with the sales process (how people buy)

a chance to talk through through the techniques, with your goal in mind, to get you started

a discussion at the end to come up with actions specific to your goal that you can take next to get Instagram providing you with more clients

To book, please fill in the form here or email zen@myownmarketingcoach.com, stating which session you would like to join and, if you know it already, your goal (including your website and social media profiles if possible).

Why can’t people find your business website/blog on the internet? Why are there no visitors on your business website/blog?Maybe Search Engine Optimisation is your answer.

If you have a business website or blog, you need to know what SEO is all about. SEO is one of the most fundamental and powerful methods to increase your business website/blog’s visibility on the internet and help you reach out to your clients online.

Is it free?Yes, it is. In this post, we will focus on the effective-yet-free methods for small business to improve their SEO but there are plenty of services (including from Google) and software on the market to improve your company website’s SEO if you have the budget.

What is SEO?Let’s break it down into two words: ’Search Engine’ and ’Optimisation’. ‘Search Engine‘ basically means Google, since more than 90% people use Google as their main search engine in Sweden, although there are others too. ‘Optimisation’ means to make your website most appealing and easy to use so the search engines like it and maximise the visibility of your business website or blog on the search results page list.

In simple terms, SEO is a method of getting your business website/blog link to appear on Google search results page as high on the list as possible when people type in any search words that are related to your business.

It’s like a digital yellow pages and all websites/blogs are fighting to be on the front page for their website/blog to be seen by their customers.

Why does Google need us to do SEO?We can think of the process of how Google determines the ranking of a search result as an audition itself. In this audition, Google use more than 200 factors to decide the order of the ranking shown on the search result page.

So what is our business website/blog auditioning for? We are auditioning to prove to Google that our business website/blog is:

The best website/blog of what customers are looking for

The most relevant website/blog of what clients are looking for

The most popular website/blog of what people looking for

How do we meet those crazy 200+ unclear factors from Google to get high ranking for our business website/blog?Luckily, lots of research and experiments have been done so there are many tips and rules discovered for how to improve the SEO for Google’s sake. By actively working to improve them, they can essentially guarantee an improvement in your website’s ranking in Google.

Is it a one-off job?We do need to work on improving our website/blog’s SEO continuously and relentlessly. As Google is constantly reviewing, adjusting and updating its search results, there is no time limit, it means this ’audition’ with Google is an on-going process and its never too late to get the ball rolling!

What happens if we do a good job of optimising our website for search engines?If our business website/blog’s SEO is well-taken-cared of, it means it will get more visibility on Google search. More exposure helps us to achieve the following:

Now you know what all the fuss about SEO is for and how it can help to grow your business.

Are you ready to get the ball rolling but don’t know how?We will unearth more secrets of SEO in future posts. If you want to get more free tips, pop your email address in the box on the right to get our blog posts by email.

Is SEO something you have yet to look into for your business? Get started with SEO with us on 21st March 2018, a two-hour training session costing only 450kr per person. We also have an autumn session on 3rd Oct 2018. Click here for more information.

Need individual help?Learn more here- see how we can help you to grow your business.

So… you get the idea, so many merits for all the effort of blogging for your business.

Did we mention that it is really cost effective? It is almost free!

This doesn’t mean it is easy. In fact, many people easily fail to grasp the core concept of blogging for business, as it is more complex than blogging for your own hobby/personal blog. Here are seven fundamental points for business blogging for you to focus on in 2018;

1. Have a plan – just writing out your latest thoughts or recent visit to Starbucks no longer works (not sure that ever did!). A business blog should be well-planned and become a good story that helps potential customers through their customer journey. Think it through before you post anything on your business website.

2. Time – when and how often is also crucial. Imagine yourself that your post is fighting for attention with other posts, news and ads across all sorts of channels that we come across everyday. Planning when and how often to post helps potential clients see, read and interact with your ongoing story.

3. Content – from headline to the last sentence, every word should be useful and in line with the message you want to carry through to your clients. It should either be creative, interesting or inspiring and a well-mixed balance of different formats.

4. Engaging your public or industry influencers – you can hugely increase the effectiveness of a blog post if you see it as the start to a ripple effect. By engaging one or several potential clients, current clients or influencers in a post, you speed up the spreading of the post immensely. It could be as simple as a reference and link to a website, an article or a post with another individual, social media profile or company.

5. Visual – ‘a picture says a thousand words’ cannot be truer than in the case of blogging. Although by visual we mean everything from the choice of colour scheme, the font, the size of the typing, the proportion of the images and everything that we should consider most important to grasp the eye of our readers, we also mean that you must, must, must use one good image that represents the content of the post. It is this image that reaches a whole extra target group.

6. Competition – do you know who your competitions are out there? What do they post on their blog? What topics are on trend right now? What are they missing that could be your ‘in’, in the discussion/conversation?

7. Research – in order to maximise the effect of the business blogging, research is needed. Why? Knowledge is the powerful tool in the vast internet sea; it can help you to stay ahead of the game, sense what direction the market is shifting to and give you inspiration. It can also help you to build authority in your business field – making a more loyal client base and steady sales. You can see who has read which blog posts and topics and understand more about your target market from that.

Are you ready to start but don’t know how?

We will dig deeper into the art of blogging in future posts, would you like to be kept posted (pun intended!)? Pop your email address in the box on the right to get our blog posts by email.

Is blogging for business something you would like to know more about? Kick start your business blogging with us on 14th March 2018, a two-hour training session costing only 450kr per person. We also have autumn sessions on 26th Sept and 24th Oct 2018. Click here for more information.